After Action Report: Tournament at Gamers Sanctuary

I attended a 1850pt tournament this weekend at Gamers Sanctuary in Flint. This was the first time I had ever been to their location (being that it's nearly a two hour drive for me to get there!) and found it to be a great store. They have lots of tables and space to play and tons of support for many different gaming systems.

The tournament itself turned out to be a bit on the small side with only six players, but we played on and had a great time anyway! Something I found really surprising was the diversity of the armies represented. I was one of only two imperial armies in the tournament. The other was a Space Wolf army. The other four armies were all Xenos armies. We had two Ork armies, a Tau army and Necrons. Very cool!

more after the jump...



So I drew the Tau player in round one. For anyone who has ever played in a Tau vs. Jump pack BA army you'll know that this is a very bad matchup for the Tau. To make matters worse for him we had Spearhead deployment so he was almost forced to just castle up, which is exactly what you don't want to do. The primary mission was Kill Points from non-troop units. The secondary was Table Quarters and the Tertiary was to get the most units wholly within your opponents deployment zone. In the end I won all three objectives, and got every single battle point modifier to boot. The only kill point I had surrendered was a Sanguinary Priest and all he had left of his army was an immobilized Devilfish carrying a squad of Fire Warriors. Not a bad way to start the day!

My opponent Mark recognized how bad a matchup he had drawn right away and just laughed at his armies misfortune the whole game and really took the beating very well. He was a very fun opponent, it was just a bad draw for him.

I think for me the big highlight of the game was when my Sniper Scouts (the only unit to succumb to the red thirst) came on from the board edge and assaulted his Stealth suit team. Damn right sniper scouts are gonna kick some ass!

Due to Spearhead deployment Mark was forced to castle up.

He scouted some Pathfinders into the trees on this side of his board edge.

And infiltrated some Stealth Suits in the crater on my board edge.
 The scouts would deal with them later!

I chose to combat squad my units as they became available from reserves.
God I missed doing that!

Here I am closing in on the last remnants of his army. Tau still have some teeth, but this is just a nightmare matchup for them. All that feel no pain combined with the ability to be in his face before he even has a chance to shoot. Every time I've played this out it's gone pretty much the same way.

In game two I drew Steve and his Orks. Steve has some kick ass old school Ork models which was really cool. He was running a three battle wagon list which I still have problems with since I haven't faced it enough to really have a handle on how best to deal with it. Especially when you factor in that this was the first time running this list.

This game use the pitched battle deployment. The primary mission was to have more of your units in your enemies deployment zone than he had in yours. The secondary was kill points and the tertiary was to have an HQ model controlling an objective in the center of the board.

In the end he beat me up pretty bad. I only had four assault marines, the sniper scouts and my auto-las predator left at the end. Funnily, despite that he only won the primary by one unit (1-0), the secondary by one kill point and we drew the tertiary as I was contesting the central objective. So despite my army getting it's butt kicked, it was really close on mission objectives. This was a fun, close game most of the way and I think I came away with a few lessons on how to face Battlewagons, or not, we'll see.

Steve was able to take his victory over me all the way to the top spot in the tournament. Congrats Steve!

Check out the old school Battle Wagons and Buggies. His mega-nobs, burnas, gretchin and a bunch of other stuff was all old school too. Very cool!

I didn't get nearly as many pics of this game. It was such a tense (in a good way) game that the camera just plain got forgotten.

In game three I faced the robotic undead of Davids Necrons. Our mission was for objectives. We each placed three at the beginning of the game. One in our own deployment zone (standard Dawn of War btw.) and two in the opponents deployment zone. The primary was to controll all three in your own deployment zone. The secondary was to simply control more than your opponent and the tertiary was kill points.

This was really much more of a fun and casual game since David was really laid back and we swapped stories as the game progressed. He came into the tourney a bit dissapointed with his list because he was rockin dual monoliths. These aren't nearly as good as the old version with the waaay better living metal rule. However, in this battle he might as well of had it for all the luck I was having against them. I just couldn't seem to hurt the darn things. And since both of them were contesting objectives in my deployment zone I really needed to get rid of them to win the primary. In the end I wasn't able to and we drew the primary. However I was able to pull off wins in both the secondary and tertiary missions. This was a fun game and the   first time I have faced Anrakyr the Traveller. He can do some wacky stuff!

David ended up getting the award for best sportsman and it was certainly well deserved. Congrats to David!

I totally forgot to take pics of this game until the very end. You can see the two monoliths sitting there denying me any chance of the primary mission. 

As it turns out, Steve and his opponent Dan drew their match which would have given me a chance to move into the top spot if I could've pulled off the primary victory in game three. It wasn't meant to be though. Instead I believe (not 100% sure) that I came in third. What I am sure of is that I did get the award for Best Painted Army! I'm pretty stoked about that. I have put a good amount of effort into the army and am quite proud of it. To have it recognized in this fashion is really quite awesome.

I would like to thank Gamers Sanctuary for hosting the event. They hold them on the third Saturday of every month and as long as I have the day off from work I think I'll be making the trek out there to play.